Settlement patterns

Traditional regions

Settlement patterns in Morocco correspond loosely to the three major environmental zones: the coastal plains and plateaus, the highland areas of the Rif and Atlas mountains, and the desert east and south of the Atlas.

The coastal plains and plateaus contain three-fourths of the country’s population and include most of its cities and virtually all of its modern commercial agriculture. It has been the home of settled farmers and seminomadic tribes for centuries. The main form of agriculture is rain-fed cereal production, with wheat and barley as the main winter crops. This is supplemented by stock raising and summer gardens producing pulses (legumes) and fresh vegetables.

The highland areas of the Rif and the Atlas contain about a fifth of the population and serve as centres of Amazighculture. Traditional villages are built for defense and are commonly perched on hillsides or hilltops. Dwellings, often multistoried, are tightly clustered and are built of stone, adobe, or tamped earth. Level land is rare, and terraces are constructed to create arable fields along the nearby valley walls. The main subsistence crops are barley as a winter crop and corn (maize) and fresh vegetables as summer crops. Many villages specialize in cash cropping of nuts or fruits—such as olives, almonds, walnuts, figs, apples, cherries, apricots, or plums—that are well-adapted to a local microclimate. Raising of sheep or goats often supplements village agriculture. Some groups practice transhumance, migrating with their flocks or herds to summer pastures at higher elevations or winter pastures at lower elevations and living in dark-coloured tents (khaymahs) woven of goat hair.

The pre-Saharan and Saharan areas south of the Atlas contain a tiny proportion of Morocco’s population. Some settlements are made up of ḥarāṭīn, the descendants of sub-Saharan Africans, and many groups speak one of the Tamazight dialects.Virtually all settlement is in oases, most of which are created artificially either by diverting water from streams or by importing water from mountains—often over some distance—via underground tunnels (qanāts). Dates are the main crop, grown as both a subsistence and a cash crop. Alfalfa, corn, wheat, barley, vegetables, and other crops are grown in the date-palm understory. Much settlement in this region is in highly distinctive, fortified adobe villages known as ksour (Arabic: quṣūr, “castles”). Nomadic camel herding was once an important economic activity in the Saharan zone, but government policies, desert warfare, multiyear droughts, and other extenuating factors have caused this way of life to disappear almost completely.

Urban settlement

Some three-fifths of the Moroccan population now lives in urban areas. Most Moroccan cities retain at least some of their traditional character and charm. During the period of the French protectorate, colonial authorities did not tamper with the traditional urban centres, or medinas (madīnahs), which were usually surrounded by walls. Rather than modifying these traditional centres to accommodate new infrastructure for administration and economic development, they established villes nouvelles (“new towns”) alongside them. In addition, they shifted the focus of political and economic life from the interior of Morocco—where it had long revolved around the imperial cities of Fès, Meknès, and Marrakech—to the Atlantic coast. Under the protectorate, Casablanca was transformed from a small coastal village into a bustling metropolis. Rabat became the capital and centre of administration. By the 1930s, bidonvilles (literally, “tin can cities”), or shantytowns, were beginning to develop around major urban areas and have since become extensive.

Demographic trends

Morocco’s population is growing at a slightly faster rate than that of countries outside Africa, but it is well below the average for those in the Middle East and North Africa. Nonetheless, Morocco has a large population for its size that is highly concentrated in the most habitable areas. About one-fourth of the population is under age 15. For some time the opportunity to emigrate to western European countries offered a partial solution to Morocco’s population pressure, and by the early 1980s some 600,000 Moroccan workers and merchants had established themselves in western Europe. Morocco’s population problem was only marginally relieved by migration to the labour markets in the Persian Gulf region during the oil boom that began in the late 20th century.